Congress may be taking the week off for its annual Fourth of July recess, but the interchange fireworks are sure to resume after lawmakers return next week. Banks and the payment card networks, which oppose the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008 in the House of Representatives and its …

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. and its PayPal payments service are generating headlines this week for enhancing their coverage of buyers' and sellers' losses when sales go bad. Less noticed but also important for merchants, however, are the enhanced risk controls for merchants that PayPal is quietly rolling out. Dubbed Fraud …

Merchants have embraced prepaid cards, particularly their in-store gift cards, but they could get even more value?and profits?from them by focusing less on breakage and anonymity and more on giving customers cards with more utility that keep track of their spending, according to a researcher who tracks the prepaid industry. …

Online sellers trying to sort out the plethora of alternative-payments choices?and make decisions regarding which, if any, to accept?should begin by asking questions about what business problems they are trying to solve, a retail executive said at an e-commerce trade show on Wednesday. “Once you understand what problem you're trying …

The state of Michigan has joined a trend, developing for the past couple of years, toward replacing paper benefit checks with electronic payment. The state on Tuesday announced it has started offering debit cards and direct-deposit options to citizens eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA), which …

A bipartisan letter last week from four U.S. senators to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. demanding information about how they set interchange rates is ratcheting up the pressure on the card networks, and it could represent another step on the U.S. road to joining about 20 other countries that either …

The opponents and defenders of bank card interchange had their say on Thursday before the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee. What's next for the controversial Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2008, however, is uncertain. The bipartisan bill introduced by panel chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and Rep. Christopher …

Major-brand credit card acceptance is a given, but the alternative payment forms are gaining traction among mid-sized e-commerce retailers, according to a recent survey by First Annapolis Consulting Inc. Some 41% of the merchants surveyed reported accepting at least one alternative payment form, and nearly half of those accept at …

It's the new, old payment system. That's essentially how an electronic-payments startup called eLayaway LLC is billing itself as it prepares for bigger things following two years of testing and a low-key rollout to merchants and consumers. Tallahassee, Fla.-based eLayaway's slogan is “credit is overrated.” Its system allows consumers, once …

While hard data are not yet available, anecdotal evidence indicates consumers are pleased with a mobile-payments pilot in San Francisco using phones equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology and involving the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system and Jack in the Box Inc. fast-food restaurants. “We've supported thousands of rides …